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THE 



PULSE OF MEN 



BY 



CLARENCE STONE 



3^ 



T^ -t^ 



The APvNold Pkess 

204 EAST TWENTY-FIFTH STREET 
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND 



THE PULSE OF MEN 



Falling Water In The Glen 

Business 

The Road Through The Pines 

The Race 

A NA^oman Singing 

The Valley Of The Fallsway 

The Autumn Light Among The Beeches 

The Storm 

The Pulse Of Men 



Copyright, 1914, by Clarence Stone 



The great things in life are 
battle and rapture 



OCT -7 1914 9^ ^'^ 

©CI,A380750 

hot 



Falling NA/ater In The 
Glen 



CHE path through the \a/ooc1s drops 
steeply down the side of a deep glen 
and ends in an open place about a 
smooth black pool. Bending over the water, it 
is singularly clear, the sand upon the bottom 
gleams like veiled silver : a step away and the 
pool glistens black again, darkly reflecting the 
dusky shadows of the woodland. 

The south bank of the glen, moist and 
green with moss, rises just beyond the border of 
the pool, and here in the hillside is the spring, a 
fountain falling unseen within a tiny cavern 
— crystal tapping crystal in the silence of the 
forest. 



A slender thread of music, such as this, can 
penetrate and pervade the consciousness until of 
all the universe only this remains, a slender 
thread of perfect music, repeating through the 
hours and the years its cool refrain, a rhythmic 
whisper of kinship from the waters under the 
earth. 

Clear cold water, invisibly distilled, falling 
with a faint still cadence in the spicy air of a 
forest glen, an unending message in music which 
the spirit gravely attends. 



Busi 



m 



iness 



ANY people, in their attitude toward 
business, exhibit a strangely bitter 
and unwarranted prejudice. Not 
choosing to see its unquenchable optimism, 
blind to its robust vigor, forgetful of the obvious 
fact that business is steadily bringing an increased 
security and freedom to the individual, is making 
possible an al\A/ays greater fineness and fullness 
of living, unenlightened persons are everywhere 
found throwing up their hands in horror at the 
mere word business. Preachers and priests 
denounce the sordidness of business, politicians 
proclaim the sinister practices of business, artists 
execrate the ugliness of business, writers build 
stories about the cruelty of business ; these men 



being simply lookers-on or dabblers in business, 
are quite ignorant of that about \A/hich they 
express such emphatic opinions. Altogether 
apart from the sweep and surge of the thing, 
apparently unaware of the eagerness, the inten^ 
sity, the courage to do and to endure \A/hich 
business creates and compels, these uninformed 
VA/itnesses, shocked by little details of rough and 
vicious doing, testify that the whole endeavor is 
outrageous, not remembering that, as regards 
details, no priest is blameless, no politician serves 
the state with thorough singleness of purpose, 
no artist invariably presents the whole truth and 
nothing but the truth, that, in short, all humanity 
is subject to ignoble deviations. 

Yet consider the zest of business. Ruthless 
it may be to the weak and incompetent, but it is 
the impersonal ruthlessness of life itself, it is the 
same hard justice which imposes inescapable 
penalties upon those born physically weak, seX' 



ually weak, mentally weak, a ruthlessness void 
of malicious intent. Business is a world-wide 
republic in which the individual gets in propor^ 
tion as he gives, in which time surely assigns 
each man to his deserved place, in which infer^ 
iority of mind or will are soon discovered and 
sentenced to routine labor, in which strength 
and efficiency of service are soon recognized 
and loaded with responsibility. 

Consider, too, the diverse panorama of busi^ 
ness, the fairy tovv'ers lifting the sky at the heart 
of each great city, the precise internal order of 
the offices, like a formal garden, the bright glamor 
of bustling wharves and thronging harbors, the 
tense stimulating pulse of the crowded streets. 
Business, indeed, with its interrelated activities, 
its tireless onward urge, its ceaseless searching 
for new avenues of advance, is that part of the 
vitSLl impetus which most nearly reflects the 
whole ; it is a mighty life-giving river, a turbulent 



river, no doubt, but a vast confident nourishing 
Nile, on which float and feed the flowers of 
communal endeavor, knowledge, religion, art. 



The Road Through The 
Pines 



n HAVING the highway with a sudden 
dip under meeting branches, then 
bending abruptly to the south, the old 
road comes at once into a tranquil place of 
dusky vistas and fragrant tonic air. Years ago 
these wooded acres \A/ere open to the sun, bear^ 
ing broadleaved tobacco plants tended by negro 
slaves, and now the silence suggests a conscious 
brooding, as if the earth remembered, without 
regretting, and pondered in the leisure of its 
present shadowy seclusion, the sunlit activity of 
that earlier day. 

Here and there the road touches upon 
glades not yet thickly overgrown, where shapely 



young pines stand clear on a carpet of those 
wiry grasses, bright green in summer, warm 
brown in winter, which thrive on sandy soils 
near salt water. Half-'wild horses, roaming 
through the pines, keep the grasses cropped 
close throughout the year, so that these open 
spaces of smooth sward, showing small symmet" 
rical evergreens at intervals, seem to have been 
thoughtfully planned and scrupulously cared for. 
This aspect of a formal garden is intensified by 
the dark encircling army of older pines, tall, 
motionless, straight like soldiers, imperturbably 
on guard in the still air. 

In one of the glades an abandoned house 
faces the road. Built of plastered logs that have 
weathered to a silver gray, this house now lost 
amid the quiet pines is too large and too soundly 
constructed to have been the home of a slave. 
Passing the farther end, a broad chimney 
appears, built of brown hematite " iron stone, as 



it is called hereabout. Time has but slightly 
diminished the solid strength of this structure, 
and if the ruined roof were done over it would 
be an habitation pleasant alike to look at and to 
live in, for the thick walls and ample fireplace 
promise an inner snugness no matter what the 
outer stress of weather. Some overseer of the 
old plantation built this house, perhaps, in the 
days when there was a far fine view across the 
open fields to distant stretches of blue tidewater. 
Passing on, the road comes to a level upland 
where the pines again grow thickly, crowding, 
indeed, so closely on both sides of the narrowing 
way that the tall silent trees seem about to surge 
forward and blot out this last trace of man's 
former occupancy. Here the life of the forest 
is felt to be peculiarly intense. Individual trees 
stand out with an emphasis of distinction not 
wholly agreeable. There is the sense of being 
watched by a thousand questioning presences. 



and the impression deepens that here, under the 
rigidity of these disciplined symmetrical shapes, 
an a\A^areness exists \A/hich is subtle, sharp in its 
quality, like the pungent piney breath of the 
place. 

Then a light wind drifts through the wood" 
land, lifting the silence as if to reveal the com- 
munal life of the pines. Nearby, measured 
whisperings are heard. Farther off, sounding 
down the dusky aisles, the echo of chanted mur- 
murs announce the progress of unseen forest 
rites. And, as the road goes on and on, from 
an undiscovered distance there comes a thin 
strange music, a rhythm that lingers in the air 
even after the road leads unexpectedly into an 
open field besides the river, now bright with 
the blue sparkle of flood tide. 



The Race 

CHE vast armory, brilliantly lighted, is 
cro\A/ded by thousands come there to 
see strong young men do their utmost 
in tests of speed and skill. There has been much 
excitement from time to time at unexpected 
achievement, so when two groups of runners 
leave their respective dressing rooms and trot 
slowly up and down the track, loosening their 
muscles for the last event of the evening, the 
championship relay race of one mile, there is a 
restless quiver all through the crowd, a nervous 
scattering of applause, and then the roaring battle 
cries of the rival college cohorts boom back and 
forth across the armory. 



Running in pairs, each man \A^iIl go twice 
around the track, covering a quarter of a mile 
and giving to his team mate such lead or loss as 
has been made. The quarter mile, longest of 
the dashes are distinguished from the runs, is 
exceedingly severe upon the runner, demanding 
both speed and staying power, and it is a reali< 
zation of this that partly accounts for the tense 
expectancy with which the race is awaited. 

The referee beckons to the teams, and the 
eight runners, four wearing blue jerseys, four in 
black, cluster about him a moment ; two of the 
eight leave the others and step to the start. 
They shake hands, crouch, and leap out together 
at the crack of the starter's pistol. The runner 
in blue takes the lead, a man moulded in the 
manner of a Greek god, tall, magnificently mus^ 
cled from shoulder to ankle, and striding in 
perfect form. His opponent, hanging at his 
heels, following him closely stride for stride, is 



gaunt, not graceful, though running with an odd 
ease, as if his feet were winged. Once around 
they go, without change, and then, coming into 
the back stretch, the lean man in black edges up, 
running wide, edges up closer, is abreast of the 
oth^r, passes him at the last turn, takes the lead 
down the straightavyay and finishes some two 
yards ahead in a tumult of roaring and stamping. 

The second pair start off almost together, 
but at the first turn the runner in blue, making 
up his slight handicap, sprints into the lead and 
sets the pace. He is one of those athletes whom 
the trainers call a "fooler", is neither tall nor 
short, is not well built, and gives no evidence in 
his appearance of either strength or speed, yet 
he must be going very fast, for he steadily draws 
away from his opponent, a heavily muscled 
fellow with a jaw like a bull dog, but unable for 
all his pluck to hold the pace. So they go, twice 
around, the runner in blue gaining slightly all the 



time and sending his team mate off with a lead 
of at least ten yards. 

The third man in blue seems a replica of 
the first, there is the same magnificence of mus^ 
cular development, the same superb symmetry 
and grace. The third man in black, though both 
short and slight, makes a definite impress of force. 
''All nerve and wire, doesn't weigh a hundred 
and thirty and tried football for two seasons", 
comments a boy nearby, and watching him in 
action, it is easy to believe him capable of great 
physical heroism. Slender though he is, he has 
that roundness of the chest and squareness of 
the shoulders which promise reserve vitality, and 
he races after his big opponent with a prodigious 
stride. But there is no appreciable change in the 
positions of the runners. The big man in blue 
thunders on, extremely graceful and extremely 
swift, the little man in black flies in grim pursuit 
without seeming to gain an inch. The vast 



crowd is very still, so that even the footbeats of 
the runners can be heard, and there is something 
ghost^like, phantasmal, in this intense effort unac^ 
companied by change. So they strive on to the 
end, sending off their team mates in precisely the 
same positions they themselves held, the runner 
in blue perhaps ten yards in the lead. 

These last men start out at a pace that 
brings the crowd up standing, and throughout 
the final relay the armory is a bedlam of shouts, 
encouragement, exhortations, pleading. The 
runners are much alike in outline, both of that 
build which so often means an especial efficiency 
for the quarter mile, tall spare men, with long 
legs and not much weight above the waist. 
The man in blue runs in rather better form, the 
man in black seems somewhat more intense, and 
thus they go once around, the man in black gaining 
slightly. Then, entering the second lap, he 
comes abreast of the runner in blue, sprinting as 



if there were only a fe\A^ yards more to go instead 
of an entire furlong; he takes the lead at the 
upper turn, the black jersey flashing to the front, 
he sprints all do\A^n the back stretch, keeps on 
sprinting at the lo\A^er turn, sprints down the final 
straighta\A^ay and finishes far in the lead, falling 
across the tape to the roaring cheers of exultant 
thousands, lifted quite out of themselves by this 
spectacle of speed, courage, and indomitable will. 



A NA/oman Singing 




'UDDENLY, like a winged ecstasy 
sweeping through the roadhouse, the 
voice of a singing woman sounds 
from a distant room. Her voice is as the moun^ 
tain air in early morning, unbelievably clear, pure 
and radiant. It is mingled vision and gladness, 
an utter high rejoicing, as if some glory of dead 
days glowed again in memory, or some dream 
of days to come welled up into a rapture of the 
spirit. 

Her voice gives lyric potence to all in woman 
which man finds eternally strange and forever 
compelling. Pride is there, and passion, springs 
ing resplendent from some remembered or re^ 
vealed miracle of love, some surrender of self 



such as humbles man into an awareness of his 
inability to experience, except as a stumbling 
imitator, this mergence which is so absolute and 
assured, which flo\A^ers in the unfathomable 
passion and pride that sound in the voice of the 
singing woman. 

Surely this woman, being human, has 
known evil days, has endured despair, has been 
torn by wild resentment, yet no taint of unhappi^ 
ness impairs the high purity of her voice. She 
seems, indeed, singing, to pass beyond happiness 
and unhappiness, for the moment she lives, as 
every man and every woman dreams of living, 
she soars triumphant somewhere in the radiant 
blue upper air which is the intended abode of 
the spirit. All desolations have dropped from 
her like dead leaves and are forgotten, in this 
moment all desires are filled and stilled. Here is 
realization, that for which humanity labors and 
hopes unceasingly, a realization all the more 



impressive in that it is apart from the physical^ 
remote from the measurable, wholly an essence. 
And, as her voice surges wonderfully on, 
golden-toned as a perfect bell, altogether assured, 
there is a sudden drop, a faltering, a lyric sob at 
which the heart leaps wildly; then again the 
winged ecstasy sweeps in triumph through the 
house, unbelievably clear, pure and radiant. 



The Valley Of The 
Fallsway 



BBOVE, the black threadwork of an iron 
bridge stands clear against the opal 
sky of early morning, BeloxA^, a deep 
valley cuts across the town, the bed of a head" 
long stream which once tumbled down the rocks 
toward the tidewater of the harbor, a stream 
now buried in a great conduit over which the 
Fallsway is being built ; here, too, with lengths 
of track parallel to the course of the emerging 
causeway, are the terminal freight yards of a 
far-reaching railroad. 

It is a place of ant-like activity in the midst 
of vast still masses. Sloping up to the western 



horizon are the flat red roofs of a multitude of 
homes. To the east, bordering the upper edge 
of the valley, are the state and city prisons, built 
of gray granite that lifts in many towers, with 
acres and acres shut in behind high stone vA^alls, 
the whole array standing like an armed guard 
about the main citadel of punishment, an immense 
square bulk ending in a pyramid \A/hose pointed 
summit seems to push back the sky. 

Farther down on the eastern edge of the 
valley are many massive buildings of unpreten-- 
tious outline, factories, power plants, warehouses, 
with here and there tall slender chimneys reach^ 
ing up almost level with the pinnacle of the prison 
citadel, and at that height waving soft plumes of 
white smoke against the luminous light gray sky. 

At the end, spreading half across the outlet 
of the valley, stands a high^ shouldered grain ele^ 
vator, seeming, in contrast with the grim group 



of prisons, like a huge innkeeper who would 
gladly feed the entire town. 

In the bed of the valley there is an intricate 
stir of human labor. All down the center, innum' 
erable little figures of men are busy upon the 
developing Fallsway; some tend the revolving 
cylinders that mix the stone and concrete, others 
push barrows back and forth, others guide the 
swinging outlet pipes through which, coming 
from overhead, the concrete drops into place, 
while all about and above the moving figures are 
taut cables and the shifting booms of derricks. 

On either side of the Fallsway, loading and 
unloading the freight cars that stand in long 
rows, other little figures of men hurry to and fro; 
jumping on and ofl^ cars, jumping on and ofl^ 
wagons, drays, motor trucks ; tossing boxes, bales, 
and casks from man to man, now and then 
clustering together as they lift something of great 
weight ; and steadily the motor trucks come and 



go, the wagons come and go, drawn by little 
figures of horses. 

The floor of the valley weaves with the 
efforts of men, beasts, and machines, all down 
its length there is concentrated confident activity; 
an impersonal energy seems to jerk the little 
figures, as though an outside force worked 
through them. 

This valley of unceasing endeavor, this 
current of little figures swirling between banks 
lined by big still masses, is not essentially difl^erent 
from the valley of earlier days, when a rushing 
stream poured down between the broad unmov^ 
ing hills; in either case an unstable essence, 
seeming so slight and transient, shapes the solid 
substance to its will. It is the old deceptive con^ 
trast between an elusive vital impetus and the 
obviously impressive material through which it 
works, the pulse of life seeming so fragile and 
ineffective, the bulk of material apparently quite 



changeless and eternal, yet powerless to with^ 
stand the slight flowing essence, yielding always 
to the slender indomitable urge. 

So, gazing down this groove across the 
town, the ponderous piles of masonry on either 
side, at first so compelling, somehow decline in 
emphasis until they seem simply a background on 
NA^hich is outlined the actual throb of life ; the 
eye is held by the little alert figures of toiling men, 
and aifter that by the soft plumes of white smoke, 
floating high up against the opal sky of early 
morning. 



The Autumn Light Among 
The Beeches 




N Indian summer haze, purple in the 
distance, veils the 1o\a/ sun of late 
afternoon. Nearby the soft still air 
is filled with amber light, quite radiant on the 
carpeted floor of the forest, as if it vA^ere an 
exhalation drifted up from the bright bro\A/n 
leaves. 

The boles of the ancient beeches rise like 
thick columns of gray smoke, their spreading 
crowns meeting in an intricate network of bare 
branches that lifts the light blue sky. The 
great age of these trees, for beeches grow but 
slowly, exacts acknowledgment from the mind. 



yet makes but slight impression; in this air, in 
this light, time attains new values and substance 
is forgotten. A calm enchantment, apart from 
all necessity, holds this quiet land. 

Here the course of the stream, bending as 
it enters from the \A^est, bending again vA^here it 
wanders off southeast, has formed a wooded 
valley shut in on every side by wooded hills, and 
this is the country of the beeches. Now and 
then the dark trunk of an oak or chestnut is seen, 
only to emphasize the thronging congregation 
of the straight gray boles. The forest is here 
very free from undergrowth, and everywhere, 
marching up the hillsides outlined against the 
carpet of brown leaves, beech lifts after beech, 
a vast and oddly unreal army. 

Going on, the feeling grows that the world 
is built wholly of dreams, lives only in dreaming. 
The substantial has been extinguished. The 
rustle of leaves under foot become a dim cosmic 



chant, as remote as the music that lurks in the 
depths of a sea shell ; the amber light pervades 
the spirit like narcotic balm, the smoky boles of 
the beeches march past with the grave phan^ 
tasmal grandeur of dead centuries. 

The veiled sun sinks behind a western hill, 
and all the west flames up, a vast far fire. 
Quickly the amber light thickens into a golden 
dusk, the purple shadows in the distance come 
nearer, the gray boles of the marching beeches 
bend and blur, then swirl and intermingle until 
the hillsides seem alive with swaying columns of 
gray smoke that interweave on a background of 
purple shadow. As twilight deepens in the 
valley, sweet spicy odors usher in the woodland 
night. 



The Storm 

CHE bright sun, the blue river, gro\A^ 
slowly dim, as if invisible veils were 
being drawn across the sky and over 
the water. The river dulls to blue-gray, to steel 
gray, then toward the north shore, more than a 
mile away, the water shows a thin edge of flat 
dull green. The sun fades out, the sky is light 
gray, faintly luminous. A wind hums from the 
north'West and waves begin to swell. The 
wind strengthens swiftly, the trees along shore 
writhe and mutter, a foamy surf comes thump- 
ing on the beach and the whole broad river rises 
up in racing white caps. The wind becomes a 
whistling hurricane, the trees bend far over, 
leaves thresh off, rotten branches break with a 
rending snap and crackle. An enormous cloud 
mounts from the north, blots out the sky, and 



drifts in black uncanny menace \gw over the 
river. The turmoil of the waves increases 
beneath the whipping wind, and in between the 
long white^ crested combers vivid stains of deep 
green and dark blue shift and play upon the 
water. The air is charged with a demoniac 
exhilaration, a great wild glee, and in the midst of 
the exultant tension brilliant jagged lightning and 
terrific crashing thunder rip again and again 
through the swooping menace of the low black 
cloud. Then rain, rain, rain, coming so fiercely that 
it beats down half the tumult of the tossing waves. 
It is all ended with the abrupt transition of 
a dream; the warm sun shines through the torn 
shreds of cloud, save for a restless surge and 
swell the blue river is as if no storm had been. 
But the air is changed. It is utterly clear to the 
eye, clean and fresh upon the skin, and sweet to 
breathe; as if the world had just been born 
and found life good. 



The Pulse of Men 



^Tw^HEN the sun returns at dawn the heart 
1 ■ 1 of man is melted by a tremulous 
^^^ delight, he grips all life in a glad 
embrace, and, holding the world in his heart, 
looks across time and space w^ith wide enlight^ 
ened eyes of understanding. This is rapture, 
surging to high tide. 

When the wind sweeps over the world 
with the long deep call of a conqueror, driving 
before it the dead air, the dead leaves, the dead 
hours, and bringing rebirth and abounding fresh- 
ness everywhere in its wake, the spirit of man 
leaps into the storm, soars to the roaring crest, 
and rides triumphant through the universe. That 
is battle, surging to high tide. 



These are the great things of life, battle and 
rapture. 

Content is but another name for slumber, and 
the love of peace is mothered by a longing for 
tranquillity among the fleshpots. Adventure, 
experiment, effort, progress, lit by unlooked-for 
moments of intense communion— this is the 
natural order of existence. All of which is of 
the spirit. A paralytic may encounter greater 
glories of the soul than will ever be met by a 
vagabond who circles all lands and all emotions. 
Unending variation, incessant seeking, thus the 
indomitable life force, that mystery of mysteries 
which men call God, leaps and crashes forward 
through a dusky forest toward the full light of 
the sun. 

So in the life of the individual ; he leaps and 
crashes forward, now in blind alleys, now on 
the main highway, and his life is valuable in pro^ 
portion to the intensity of his going. Humanity 



knows in its heart, and reveals this knowledge 
by its widely applied measure of quality, that the 
high things in life are not snug and safe, are not 
quiet and comfortable. Humanity knows, for 
instance, that beauty in woman and strength in 
man are but different expressions of an except' 
ional capacity for violence, of a nature so intense 
as to be ruthless and unpredictable in its mani^ 
festations— like life itself. First place is given, 
alike in history, in present public affairs, and in 
intimate personal relations, to those in whom 
there is felt to be a basis of unyielding iron. 
A main who is strong, masterful, and unafraid, 
will capture the imaginations of other men no 
matter hov/ questionable his actions may be 
when judged by the standards of his generation, 
and only those women can deeply stir and sway 
the hearts of men who show, in addition to 
loveliness, the promise of profound and decisive 
emotions. Those who, regardless of the out' 



come, dare all for love, for an ideal, for an 
ambition, have ever been acclaimed with peculiar 
enthusiasm, and are long remembered as having 
evidenced in their actions and attitudes an 
unusual capacity to attain one or both of 
humanity's great needs— conquest, and rapture. 
In youth the hope of rapture beats upon 
man s senses like the overwhelming music of a 
mighty orchestra, and this hunger for ecstasy, 
which is surely the greatest of human needs, 
continues so long as sensibility remains, living 
deep hidden and forgotten, it may be, surging 
suddenly to flood tide again and again, calling 
man irresistibly out into the cosmic current: 
making his heart pound at the sound of a wom^ 
an s voice ; lifting him up, some poignant night in 
winter, to a rapt awareness that he is of one 
origin with the singing stars ; stretching him prone, 
some golden day of summer, to throb in fellow^ 



ship with the sun, an atom mute with worship 
of the vast life force. 

All rapture has its root in sex. Children know 
delight but cannot comprehend rapture. Rap^ 
ture is mergence, a union With something ordin^ 
arily apart from the individual, and it is the stir 
of sex, the instinct toward renewal, reaching its 
filaments mysteriously into the uttermost outposts 
and angles of personality, which urges humanity 
to mergence, whether the rapturous mergence 
be an actual passion of love or an ecstasy of 
worship in the open air. Alternate tides sweep 
every soul, one tide toward self^supremacy, one 
tide toward self-surrender, and the pull toward 
rapture, which is self-surrender, is sex seeking 
expression. The legendary gods, the poets and 
prophets of history, all those to whom was given 
the gift of insight, are imagined or are actually 
known to have been abundantly sexual ; that is. 



they lived closer than most men to the cosmic 
urge toward rebirth through self^surrender. 

A poet is a man in love with the glory of 
existence, and in him the main motive is an in^ 
stinct, clearly related to the sexual instinct, which 
impels him to express in rhythm his rapture at 
life's splendor, just as a man overcome by the 
beauty of a woman can think and talk only of 
her. 

All art has in it something of sexual rapture, 
and in striving to make his fellows see a particu^ 
lar loveliness as he sees it, the artist is mastered 
and driven by much the same motives that impel 
a woman who is about to become a mother 
to hope and plan and suffer and labor that her 
child may be born without flaw, altogether 
lovely and much loved. 

An awe of the potency of sex appears as a 
part of all religions, and among primitive peoples 
there is often developed a distinctive religion of 



sex; throughout history there are records of 
phallic worshippers who idolized the function of 
reproduction in a groping endeavor to express 
their awareness of and reverence for this strange 
and all'powerful force. Equally evidencing the 
widespread human sense of the importance of 
sex is the fact that in all lands virgins have been 
held in singular estimation, as having abstained 
from sexual mergence and so attained an un^ 
usual strength of character. On the other hand, 
proving in yet another way the far-reaching 
influence of sex, and also proving that few arc 
properly celibate, is the fact that a large percent^ 
age of the inmates of insane asylums are judged 
by psychic experts to have become deranged as 
a result of too long a denial of the sexual urge. 

it is sex which gives to almost every woman 
and man at least one period of miraculous 
awakening, an enlargement of understanding, an 
insight into life, an accord with its underlying 



magnificent forces, a feeling of oneness with the 
seasons and the tides. All the allurement of the 
springtime, the wonder of the budding woods, 
the gladness of the stirring grasses, is but the 
universal pulse of sex, as the grave dignity of late 
summer, the glowing culmination of early autumn, 
is simply sex fulfilled. 

Likewise the lesser raptures experienced by 
humanity are in some way related, directly or 
remotely, to the sexual instinct, are evidences, it 
may be, of a capacity for sexual response. The 
great and the little delights, music, fragrances, 
the pleasures of taste and of touch, the gripping 
vision of beauty, are reminders, surely, that since 
life is both the seed and the flower of love, it is 
properly shot through with a complex loveliness. 

Conquest, the most continuous of man's 
needs, is nature's method of progressing through 
the development of difl^erences, of variations, and 
the testing of these by the fight for supremacy. 



Just as all rapture has its root in sex, all war 
from the actual clash of bodily conflict to the sub^ 
tlest questionings of science, the loftiest aspirations 
of idealism, is of the mind, and so it is that as the 
mind of man expands and matures, after his 
body has attained full growth and is of seasoned 
settled fibre, more and more his hours are claimed 
by some sort of war. Youth, indeed, has its 
bitter battles, but prolonged war is for the 
mature man. 

War in the literal limited sense, a series of 
battles between armies of men who seek to kill 
or maim each other, is of course, for all of its 
spectacular accompaniment and emotional disturb- 
ance, only a small part of the unending human 
war. Economic war is vastly more important 
than military war, the latter being obviously the 
outcome of economic strain, being often, indeed, 
the evidence of an economic crisis, just as 



economic struggles are usually an indication of 
spiritual progress. However, war in the limited 
sense, military conflict, is no doubt inevitable and 
frequently desirable ; it is the condition precedent 
of any considerable economic development, it 
being a commonplace of history that nations 
make their longest steps forward in those gener^ 
ations immediately succeeding devastating bloody 
struggles, the efliect of \A/hich is to revitalize a 
people by forcing it to exert itself to the utmost 
in order to survive. Similarly, spiritual develop^ 
ment, as registered by progress in the arts and in 
the general tone of living, has been most remark^ 
able in those periods when, following some pro^ 
found economic strife, a people has had an era 
of exceptional awareness, to be followed neces^ 
sarily by that dullness which always comes in 
the wake of tranquillity. Thus far humanity's 
high tides have been reached in the republics of 
Athens, Rome, and Venice, at the times when 



individual distinction NA/'as given the widest margin 
for development, and before those times when 
hereditary distinctions had begun to act as an 
opiate. The next high tide will be reached here 
in America, and already the upward surge can 
be strongly felt, as in the state universities of the 
\A/est, in the architecture of commerce, in out- 
door painting, and in the reservation and main- 
tenance of municipal parks that aid both the 
bodies and the spirits of city dwellers. 

NA^ar is sharply contrasted with the isolation 
in which man meets rapture, by the fellowship 
with other men which it brings. It is not by a 
decorous and sentimental loving-kindness, but 
through a robust striving, now one against 
another, now all together against the forces of 
external nature, that men become brothers. And 
since conquest means both victory and defeat, 
means destruction as well as achievement, the 
eternal war of existence is reflected in the 



diverse conditions and estates of men. So, though 
life on earth is an experience to which each 
man responds in an unique way, men may be 
divided with some accuracy into three general 
classes : goats, goatherds, and outsiders. 

The great majority are goats, wanton, 
capricious, rebellious. Lacking vision and the 
self 'restraint which vision usually brings, they 
run the gantlet all through life, stabbed and 
beaten in turn by rending desires and benumb" 
ing penalties, pushed on and kept at it by their 
needs and the needs of those who are dear, 
falling at last disfigured, torn, and broken by 
defeat, incapable of conceiving a life campaign, 
or even of carrying out unaided any plan that 
calls for sustained fighting, with not much more 
stability or comprehension than a child, and hence 
peculiarly at the mercy of chance and circum^ 
stance, the goat is given this in compensation: he 



packs more real rapture into his battered life than 
is the portion of a dozen goatherds. 

The goatherds are equipped at birth with 
clearer minds and less tumultuous instincts than 
the goats, and are trained from their earliest 
years to some degree of self ^repression. So, ex^ 
ercising a disciplined collective will, they are able 
through forethought and steady effort to continue 
the human advance and also win for themselves 
some margin of ease ; that is, the goatherds find 
life a paying proposition, and the joy of conquest 
is theirs. Temperate, cautious, industrious, these 
capable cohesive goatherds keep themselves and 
all other men in order ; they are the officers of 
the human army, insisting upon an advance 
whenever an opening seems assured, and equally 
insisting that when the army cannot go ahead, it 
is better to mark time than to break ranks. 

The greatest of the goatherds, commonly 
called captains of industry and in recent years 



much execrated as unnatural monsters, are of 
course essential to human development, and are 
extremely valuable. Harsh they often are, no 
doubt, and at times merciless, but this is true of 
the wind, the sea, and other impersonal forces 
and it is as impersonal forces that the captains 
should be regarded. Humanity has need of 
such men. Not one human being in one hun^ 
dred can be trusted either to live his own life in 
its intended fullness or to refrain from invading 
the lives of his fellows, and men, diverse and 
perverse, owe a great deal to these ruthless 
directors, who, in the process of pushing higher 
for their own ends the human average of com^ 
fort and security, demand stability in those who 
serve them, and in consequence the economic 
prizes go mainly to the scrupulous, the systematic 
the reliable and restrained. The conqueror type 
will continue to be essential until the human 
average of responsibility is markedly higher than 



at present. The goats, the great majority, roll 
across the channels of progress like dangerous 
derelicts as soon as compulsion is removed from 
them, hence the few who have a genuine fac-' 
ulty for leadership possess a peculiar value to 
humanity, a value which quite outweighs any 
personal greed of which they may be guilty; the 
captains render services worth more than any 
price they may be able to exact. 

As is consistent with the ideal of safety above 
all things, the goatherds cultivate sameness, resent- 
ing with hostile suspicion any variation of idea or 
attitude, and it is this, their assumption that, 
"We are the law and the court of last resort, 
not only for ourselves but also and always for 
you," that makes goatherds regard outsiders as 
altogether objectionable ; the outsider knows only 
one court of last resort, and he carries that 
around with him. 



Judged only by numbers, the outsiders seem 
inconsiderable, a thin sprinkling here and there 
who live free and original lives. Not at loose 
ends like the goats, nor stiffened by custom and 
caution as are the goatherds, thoughful, eager, 
intense, the outsider lives largely in the future, and 
never scruples to scorn the present or put the 
past in contempt if by so doing he can open a 
path forward or place an outpost well ahead. 
These men are the scouts, the forerunners of 
the race, and are always springing up in every 
field of human endeavor to proclaim a better 
way, a truer method. 

On the other hand, the outsider is usually 
useless aside from his chosen work. He has 
the specialist's intolerance of anything other than 
extremely thorough doing, and he realizes that he 
can be thorough only in the one endeavor, so in 
all things other than the one thing in which he 
is absorbed, he is quite content to accept the 



current situation, he is the very sort of dead 
weight which he must fight with incessant vigor 
to overcome in carrying ahead his own campaign. 
Yet for all his lack of symmetry and warped 
outlook, the outsider is the most essential human 
type ; the outsider is new life. It is the organ- 
ized goatherds, to be sure, with their disciplined 
collective strength, who make possible the devel- 
opment of such of these new ideas, appreciations 
and proposals as have human value, but the 
impetus and direction are supplied by outsiders ; 
in all the arts, in the search for knowledge, in 
the increase of communal efficiency, it is the 
outsiders who point and push humanity ahead. 
This, then, is the human alignment in the 
unending war of progress which men wage 
with each other and against the forces of ex- 
ternal nature ; the intensely perceptive but unbal- 
anced outsiders who conceive and begin; the 
powerful, prudent, persistent goatherds who 



enlarge and achieve ; the goats, who live, laugh, 
labor, suffer, love and die unaware of anything 
other than immediate personal issues. 

Such is the human pulse, quickened by bat^ 
tie and rapture, and whatsoever be the sweep 
and surge of alternate tides across the soul of 
man, one tide toward self^supremacy, one tide 
toward self' surrender, he forever seeks, alike in 
the ecstasy of mergence and in the exaltation of 
conquest, an expression of his belief in, and his 
unceasing desire for, unity of vibration with the 
eternal cosmic throb; or, oneness with God. 



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